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November 22 - December 15, 2025
“What you said is of no interest, and what you meant was clear enough.”
“My father has no need to rule, for he is the sharp sword that makes and unmakes kings,”
“Giving a woman your whole life is meaningless without giving her your whole heart as well. You should pay more attention to the conclusion of that love token, not just the beginning.’”
“I don’t know what constitutes marriage in this future of yours, but in the present moment it is something worth dying for.”
“I could have stopped myself from having her. Then there would have been no one to lose!”
Words kill just as swords do.”
“Weddings aren’t for the benefit of the bride or the groom. Most couples would be content to go off on their own as we did, say a few words, and then leave for a holiday. Weddings are rites of passage for the community.”
‘Change is the only reliable thing in the world.’” “Heraclitus,”
but revenge is never an adequate remedy for loss.
“You will not be alone either, Philippe de Clermont,” I whispered fiercely. “I’ll find a way to be with you in the darkness, I promise. And when you think the whole world has abandoned you, I’ll be there, holding your hand.” “How could it be otherwise,” Philippe said gently, “when you are in my heart?”
Not even spies conduct business on Christmas Eve,”
when the sound of carolers rose from the street outside the windows. They were not all singing in the same key, and those who didn’t know the words were inserting scandalous details about the personal lives of Joseph and Mary.
“All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land.”
“Is it normal to be frightened and fierce and tender all at once?”
No longer a solitary meteor moving through space and time, I was now part of a complicated planetary system. I needed to learn how to keep my own center of gravity while being pulled this way and that by bodies larger and more powerful than I was.
“He manages to convey in a few words a full range of feeling and meaning. It is a talent I envy.”
a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountaintop.
So long as she has words and ideas, Annie will always possess something that is hers alone.”
we are sometimes put on a pedestal or mistaken for a kitchen stool.”
she’d vowed never to appear “adorably petite” again.
“You know better than to pester Goody Alsop with questions.” “We face a dark future if children stop asking questions, Susanna,” Goody Alsop remarked.
Fear breeds contempt, then hate. It is a familiar story.
you are my life.” “Your wife,” I corrected him. “My life,” he repeated. “You are not just my heart but its beating.
And so I discovered that the practice of magic was not unlike the practice of history. The trick to both wasn’t finding the correct answers but formulating better questions.
“One should find wholeness in marriage, Gabriel, but it should not be a prison for either party,”
The emperor behaves like an inexperienced youth rather than a seasoned monarch, fascinated by what he cannot have.
And I didn’t have to meddle with the past—I only had to see to it that the past was not forgotten.
